Mexico's top security officials promised Tuesday that a new federal offensive to rescue towns besieged by the Knights Templar drug cartel in western Michoacan state would stay "until there is security and peace for all state residents."

Interior Secretary Miguel Osorio Chong and his national security team met with local officials in the state capital of Morelia at a time of escalating tensions in Michoacan, where communities mistrustful of state authorities have been creating their own vigilante forces for protection against the cartels.

Michoacan is the Mexican state most visibly dominated by a drug cartel.

Gunmen in vehicles marked only with the Knights Templar symbol, a red cross, roam the countryside, burning businesses and homes of anyone who refuses to pay them protection money.

The cartel has boldly marked its territory by building small roadside chapels to "Saint Nazario," a fallen leader of the quasi-religious drug cartel who was killed in a battle with police in 2010.

As convoys of soldiers rode into the steamy territory known as Tierra Caliente late Monday, they passed the remains of chapels destroyed by local self-defense groups that sprang up in February to fight the cartel.

In the town of Coalcoman, soldiers sped past the still-smoldering remains of at least three sawmills torched by the cartel's gunmen last week after that town rose up against them. They also passed burned-out hulks of two trucks and a passenger bus set afire by gunmen on the highway outside town as a warning to anyone who tried to bring supplies or reinforcements in.

Gunmen in vehicles marked only with the Knights Templar symbol, a red cross, roam the countryside, burning businesses and homes of anyone who refuses to pay them protection money.

The United States is much more advanced. We have an entire division of the Treasury Department devoted to looting the productive class. I doubt Mexico will ever catch up to us... until the great crash.

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